This year's Fiftieth Anniversary commemoration of the Korean War will help the American public put this historic event into clearer perspective. It is an honor to speak on behalf of the thousands of men and women from 20 nations who, beginning 50 years ago, joined with their comrades from South Korea and the United States in fighting and winning the United Nation's first battle to stop and roll back totalitarian communist aggression against a free and democratic people.
I am puzzled by historians, writers, and the national media who give such an inordinate amount of attention to the unsuccessful effort to save South Vietnam from communist aggression from North Vietnam, while consistently forgetting our very successful effort to save South Korea from the attack organized by Russia and carried out by communist North Korea. The hard, bloody, 37 months of fighting in Korea have been so unjustly ignored that it is now labeled the "Forgotten War." As a Korean War veteran, I can tell you it has never been "forgotten" by those of us who served there.
The American presence in Korea did not begin with the war. The United States first entered Korea on September 3, 1945, to enforce the Japanese surrender and to meet advancing Soviet troops at the 38th parallel. Today, nearly 55 years later, 37,000 U.S. soldiers remain near that same parallel where the Korean War began on this date in 1950 and ended with the armistice on July 27, 1953.
The nation was shocked in July of 1950 when President Truman courageously ordered U.S. forces back into South Korea to meet the surprise attack by North Korea. I had graduated from Colorado College on June 2, 1950, and simultaneously received a commission as Second Lieutenant in the Marine Reserve. I drove a bus over Trail Ridge Road that summer, and while picking up passengers at Union Station, I saw thousands of hastily recalled Marine, Air Force, Navy, and Army Reservists traveling back to camp and to the troop ships waiting in California. No one went to Canada.
I remember what that geographic map line looks like on Mother Earth because, during the spring of 1951, I served as a platoon leader in the Seventh Regiment of the First Marine Division on the 38th parallel near the City of Chunchon, in Kang Won Province. I arrived in Korea in March of 1951 and was given command of an infantry platoon. A line had been established across the Korean Peninsula at basically the 38th parallel by the United Nations forces. We attempted to move forward slowly and to contain any major attack made by the Chinese and North Korean forces. It was there, on April 4, 1951, while leading my platoon up one of the hills in that rugged area, I was wounded. A couple of our Korean comrades carried me down the hill on a bamboo stretcher to an aid station, and I started my slow journey back to the United States.
The Korean War was fought by citizen soldiers. There was a sudden involuntary recall of thousands of civilians, inactive military reservists—most of whom were decorated World War II veterans only four short years away from active duty in that war and just completing their education or starting in new careers and beginning new families. This phenomenon is perhaps the most poignant untold story of the Korean War. With little or no refresher military training, many were rushed pell-mell into combat in Korea as individual replacements for depleted American units desperately fighting for their lives and to keep from being pushed off the Pusan perimeter. They went on to participate in one of the great combat landings in the history of war, the Inchon landing, which they followed up by defeating the North Korean Army and driving it back to the Korean border and into China. They then fought off the sudden invasion of Korea by hordes of Chinese divisions and were forced, in sub-zero temperatures and against overwhelming forces, to fight their way out of the Chosin Reservoir, shoot the MIGs out of MIG Alley, save the Hungnam beachhead, and ultimately preserve South Korea's freedom in the battles of Iron Triangle, Heartbreak Ridge, and Pork Chop Hill. Sadly a great many of these brave citizen soldiers did not survive their second war. Freedom had—and still has—a high cost in lives.
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Two Marines, under enemy fire, run through a rice paddy in North Korea. Photo: David Douglas Duncan |
Thousands of hurriedly called-up Reserves and National Guardsmen, and hastily trained teenage draftees, along with the young UN soldiers, became part of the 54,246 killed, 103,284 wounded, and 8,177 still missing-in-action from the three years of bloody fighting in Korea. America took little notice of our going off to Korea or of our return. There were no official welcomes home, no parades. Those of us who did survive returned home, stashed away our uniforms (many for a second time), and either looked for a job or finished our education, attempting to get our lives and families together and in order again.
I am sure many of you have wondered over the years what our service and sacrifices achieved. I would like to suggest to you today a few of the ideas that have come to me:
1. The Korean War was a clear and clean-cut victory for the
United States and the United Nations.
2. The Korean War stopped a major movement to the south by the
communist forces of the world.
3. The Korean War, in my mind, saved Japan from being engulfed
by the communist plague.
4. The Korean War made possible the miracle of today's modern
South Korea, correctly titled the Republic of Korea.
So today, on behalf of my veteran comrades from the United States and South Korea, I ask you to remember the sacrifices of the then youths of our country to save South Korea from communist tyranny and the conditions under which the North Koreans still live today. On the brink of a new century, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the United Nation's first victory in defense of democratic freedom. We hope this celebration and remembrance will lead Americans to remember the sacrifices made and recognize what we did not as the "Forgotten War," but as the vitally important and necessary "Korean War for Freedom." We defended and preserved for the people of South Korea the world's dearest heritage—Freedom.
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Dwight A. Hamilton is a native of Denver and a practicing attorney holding membership in the Bar Associations of Denver, Colorado, and America. He is a Past President of the Uniform Law Conference and a member of the Sixth Church of Christ, Scientist. A Past Master of Union Lodge No. 7 and Past Grand Master of Colorado (1989), Ill. Hamilton petitioned Denver Consistory in 1960, has ably filled many posts within the Rite, was appointed a Deputy in Colorado in November 1994, and elected the S.G.I.G. in Colorado in October 1995. |